Quotable Benedict: On Academic Freedom, and Heterodox Teaching

In Pope Benedict's address to Catholic educators delivered yesterday, he succintly framed the questions about (and implied the answers to) some basic issues which seem to continually escape the erudite academic community here in the United States:

In regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges universities, I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church’s munus docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent of it.

In the grand spirit of recent academic scholarship, let me provide some Cliffs Notes:

• Academic freedom is a good, as long as it honestly examines the evidence at hand
• Academic freedom is not a free "get out of jail" card, in fact it can put you in the doghouse of relativism and "novelty for novelty's sake" when it becomes the sole measure of academic merit
• To falsely justify "positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church" is in fact a betrayal of a Catholic university's fundamental identity and mission.

For anyone cramming for the future final exam, I hope they put these bullet points on their quicksheet.

And if you're wondering about the duty of Catholic educators to provide a faithful witness to the world, try counting the number of times the pope uses the word "witness" in this address.

I'll give you a hint - the answer is eleven.